Blurb: Love unearthed his heart from the cold, hard ground.
Now comes the fight to revive it.

Love. Just when Max Kelley thought he’d eradicated it from his life for good it snuck back in, in the form of his beautiful new sub, Sean. Something that Max is far from happy about. In fact, he fights it tooth and nail. Having his world decimated was hell on earth, an experience he’d go to any lengths to avoid repeating. Problem is, while his head is determined to protect his heart, his heart can’t stop thinking about Sean. Sean, his perfect sub, his perfect match, his perfect everything. Which makes him that much more of a threat. Were Max to claim him and then lose him, the devastation would be far greater than even Kevin’s death. So, in order to ensure his heart and soul stay intact, he must once again eradicate love from his life. Eradicate Sean from his world. But Sean is a scrapper, just like Max, and refuses to give up without a fight. In their final showdown of fiery passion and wills, whose heart will come out in one piece?

Review: This is book 2 of the Scott and Tad Spinoff. You really have to read book 1, Unearthed, before this, and I highly recommend you read Scott and Tad as well, as they were the ones who started it all and that series is amazing. The first installment of Max’s story was really good, but it had some pretty big shoes to fill after Scott and Tad. Max has some major issues, so much that it has taken a lot of pages to work through.

Sean is fabulous and amazing, with such a wonderful attitude that it was hard not to be affected by it. He tries so hard for Max, takes everything Max throws at him and comes back for more, even when he should have walked away and never looked back (on more than one occasion). But, he knew what he wanted, saw what he and Max could have, and almost never gave up trying to get it. Max, on the other hand, not so much. He spends most of his story beating himself up, denying himself and Sean, hurting Sean time and again, all in the name of being broken beyond repair. When he finally decides his only option is to give Sean to another dom, I wondered why he didn’t think of his own mentor, but instead chose Kai, whom he stated he barely knew. Then again, I questioned a lot of things Max did.

Ms. Knight is a master of the hot scenes though, and she did not disappoint in this area. They were creative and held a nice balance of dirty talk and dialog to go along with the rest. Unfortunately, there were some issues with the rest of the story that had me scratching my head in disappointment.

As I said, Max spends much of his time in self-denial, self-inflicted angst and turmoil, so much so that it got very tiresome and repetitive. When a particular scene ended, the story didn’t move on, but the scene was then basically retold through Sean’s POV so we had to experience it all over again. Much of it felt unnecessary. There were also certain phrases that were used over and over, enough that they stood out like beacons. For example, “truth be told” was used frequently.

This story is also told somewhat throughout the same time frame as Scott and Tad. So, there were times when we got to see things that happened in Scott and Tad’s story, but from a different angle, which was kind of fun, but also felt like their amount of page time was a bit unnecessary to the overall story.

Those niggles aside, I enjoyed this quite a bit even though I admit I had to skim a little here and there. I loved everything about Sean, except for how easy he let Max off the hook at times. I loved the humor and dialog and definitely the hot smexy scenes. Seeing Scott and Tad again was nice as well, and I am definitely looking forward to seeing more of Kai in action, especially with the seemingly confused Brent. So, while this one didn’t wow me as much as I had hoped, Ms. Knight remains on my auto-read list, and I can’t wait to see what she cooks up next!

Overall Impression: I really liked it

*I received a copy of this book from the author in return for a fair and honest review.*